Stuttgarter Kammerorchester & Thomas Zehetmair – #4 Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 23 & 38 “Prague” / Violin Concerto No. 3 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:41 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SKO RECORDS
What can we hear on this album? Firstly, a symphony that is only around nine minutes long, formally and tonally an Italian piece (with three merged movements). KV 181 in D major, composed in May 1773, shortly after the Milan premiere of “Lucio Silla”, begins with fanfares in Allegro spiritoso, followed by highly dramatic, expansive contrasts between major and minor, forte and piano, light and shadow, spanned over a “walking” bass, as well as effective dialogues between the first and second violins, which audibly emulate the tonal ideals of the Mannheim School. In the second movement, an Andantino grazioso, the solo oboe sings a melody that resembles a (two-part) opera aria. The Presto assai finale, a finely structured Rondo, uses dotted notes as it marches towards a happy end in a narrative that speaks to us without words.
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ORF Radio Symphonieorchester Wien, Howard Griffiths, Thomas Zehetmair – Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 19 KV 459 – Concerto for Flute & Harp KV 299 – Andante for Flute KV 315 – Horn Concerto No. 1 KV 412/514 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:04 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
For the seventh volume in this collection devoted to Mozart by the younger generation of soloists, the award-winning Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan records the concerto K.459 with the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester in Vienna. French horn player Nicolas Ramez records one of his favourite concertos, the first of Mozart’s four horn concertos. Finally, the young flutist Diren Duran performs the Andante for flute and orchestra K.315 before accompanying the harpist Elisabeth Plank for the divine concerto for flute, harp and orchestra K.299.
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Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Thomas Zehetmair – #3 Bartók / Adams: Divertimento / Shaker Loops (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:12 minutes | 870 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SKO RECORDS
Béla Bartók and John Adams – the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra has chosen an unusual pairing for the third release on its own label. The orchestra and chief conductor Thomas Zehetmair play to one of their greatest strengths: pushing themselves to the limits in terms of creativity. In Bartók’s Divertimento for string orchestra, the folk motifs dance dangerously close to the abyss. The contrasts between optimism and a premonition of doom are striking – Bartók composed the piece in the summer of 1939. In John Adams’ “Shaker Loops”, the extremes oscillate between lucid pauses and rousing outbursts. This recording makes it impressively clear that this popular work of “minimal music” is not so minimal after all, but contains complex arcs of tension and transitions.
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Thomas Zehetmair & Orchestre de chambre de Paris – Robert Schumann (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:18 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Founded in 1978, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris quickly established its reputation as one of Europe’s leading chamber orchestras. In 2012, Thomas Zehetmair was appointed the orchestra’s principal conductor and artistic advisor and on this recording, made at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in February 2014, does double duty as both soloist and conductor. Zehetmair’s insightful approach to Robert Schumann has already been demonstrated on ECM New Series with the Zehtmair Quartet, whose recording of the Schumann string quartets won prizes including the Gramophone Award as Album of the Year in 2003. Here the Orchestre de chamber de Paris plays the Symphony no. 1 “Spring” (1841) and the Phantasie for Violin and Orchestra and the Violin Concerto (both 1853). The composition of the first symphony drew inspiration from Schubert’s 9th Symphony and from the poetry of Adolf Böttger. The Phantasie and the Violin Concerto had quite different fates. The Phantasie was premiered to huge acclaim after initial performances. The Violin Concerto had to wait more than 80 years for its premiere, and too often since then players have made adjustments to the violin part. Thomas Zehetmair reveals how urgent and convincing the impact of Schuman’s original version can be when the performers enter into its spirit.
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Thomas Zehetmair – Niccolò Paganini: 24 Capricci Per Violino Solo, Op.1 (2009/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:13 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Thomas Zehetmair’s manually overwhelming and thought-provoking ECM recording of the complete sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Eugène Ysaÿe – released in 2004 to great critical acclaim – offered ample proof that alleged virtuoso pyrotechnics can be surprinsingly multi-faceted and complex when approached by a musician with a rare awareness of stylistic layers and expressive traditions. His (long deleted) Teldec version of the Capricci dating from the early nineties quickly won the status of a new benchmark recording. In 2007 he went to the Austrian monastery of St. Gerold to record a second – even more ambitious – interpretation. In an interview with English journalist Ivan Hewett Zehetmair recently explained his ever-growing interest in this particular repertoire: ‘Every violinist grows up with these pieces, because they are such fantastic technical studies. Paganini sometimes had these showman’s tricks, like playing on only one or two strings. But you know, all the great musicians who heard him, like Schumann, took him totally seriously. These Caprices aren’t just studies, or showpieces. They’re improvised character pieces, so full of poetry and fantasy.’
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Thomas Zehetmair – J.S. Bach: Sei Solo – The Sonatas and Partitas (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:06:33 minutes | 2,36 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Thomas Zehetmair, one of the great violinists of our time, returns after almost four decades to the summit of the violin repertory, the solo Sonatas and Partitas (BWV 1001-1006) of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Zehetmair uses period instruments and techniques playing the music with vividness and intelligence to produce a recording that is deeply steeped in the music and at the same time powerfully original. The album was recorded at Propstei St. Gerold in the Austrian Alps and is issued as a double CD with a 36-page booklet featuring German liner notes by Thomas Zehetmair and Peter Gülkein with an English translation by Paul Griffiths.
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Thomas Zehetmair – Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 (Live in Utrecht, 9/30/2003) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:45 minutes | 385 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa
Orchestra of the 18th Century, consisting of 50 members from 20 different countries. The musicians, all specialists in 18th and early 19th century music, play on period instruments or on contemporary copies. The wide-ranging repertoire this orchestra performs includes works by Purcell, Bach, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Chopin, and has been recorded for Philips Classics and nowadays for the Spanish label Glossa. In August 2014, the Orchestra had to say farewell to Bruggen. This live recording of Johannes Brahm’s Violin Concerto – with Thomas Zehetmair as soloist – was made at a concert in Utrecht (NL) in September 2003.
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Noriko Ogawa, Musikkollegium Winterthur & Thomas Zehetmair – Richard Dubugnon: Klavieriana, Op. 70 & Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:05 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Born in 1968, the Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon writes music that has been described as “driven by a playful modern sensibility” (The New York Times). His work list includes all genres, from solo pieces to large orchestral works, such as the Helvetia Symphony, scored for the same forces as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He has also written for smaller orchestra, however, and this recording is bookended by his two chamber symphonies. Chamber Symphony No. 1 was composed in 2013, and in his liner notes the composer admits to influences from Arnold Schönberg and Franz Schreker, as well as Olivier Messiaen: “if passionate gestures evoke the decadent Vienna of the turn of the 20th century, the overall harmonic colour remains quite “French”… Switzerland is, after all, half way between Vienna and Paris”’.
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Ruth Killius, Thomas Zehetmair, Royal Northern Sinfonia – Bartók / Casken / Beethoven (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:18:46 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
This powerful New Series album represents “a résumé and a departure” for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording from The Sage, Gateshead.
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Robert Schumann – Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 1 & Phantasie – Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Thomas Zehetmair (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:14 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | Digital Booklet | © ECM Records GmbH
Founded in 1978, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris quickly established its reputation as one of Europe’s leading chamber orchestras. In 2012, Thomas Zehetmair was appointed the orchestra’s principal conductor and artistic advisor and on this recording, made at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in February 2014, does double duty as both soloist and conductor. Zehetmair’s insightful approach to Robert Schumann has already been demonstrated on ECM New Series with the Zehetmair Quartet, whose recording of two Schumann string quartets won prizes including the Gramophone Award as Album of the Year in 2003. The composition of the Symphony no. 1 “Spring” (1841) drew inspiration from Schubert’s 9th Symphony and from the poetry of Adolf Böttger. The Phantasy and the Violin Concerto (both 1853) had quite different fates. The Phantasy was premiered to huge acclaim in October 1853. The Violin Concerto had to wait more than 80 years for its premiere, and too often since then players have made adjustments to the violin part. Thomas Zehetmair reveals how urgent and convincing the impact of Schumann’s original version can be when the performers enter into its spirit.
Read more